Ning Jizhe, vice chair of China’s top planning agency National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), visited Myanmar from November 24 to 27. The visit is built on the consensus reached by State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and China’s leader Xi Jinping at the end of 2017, with regards to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor […]

NEW DELHI: China’s move to scrap presidential term limits is expected to give a major boost to Xi Jinping’s expansive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, much to India’s discomfort. The Chinese Communist Party’s decision to scrap the two-term limit for China’s President was indicated in October last year when Xi was […]

Throughout Asia the frontiers of investment are being pushed ever onward, gobbling up former backwaters in the hunt for cheap labor, natural resources, infrastructure deals, and the massive profits that can be made in the margins of a country transitioning from “emerging market” to “plain old market.” As the developed, investor countries of the world […]

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — When Myanmar’s leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, wanted to hold a peace conference to end her country’s long-burning insurgencies, a senior Chinese diplomat went to work. The official assembled scores of rebel leaders, many with longstanding connections to China, briefed them on the peace gathering and flew them on a chartered […]

ON APRIL 10th a freight train pulled out of Barking station in London carrying Scotch whisky, baby milk and engineering equipment. It arrived in Yiwu in eastern China (see map) nearly three weeks later, completing the second-longest round-trip train journey ever made (after Yiwu to Madrid and back, a record set in 2014). It lopped […]

MANDALAY, Myanmar — From damp and drizzly London, the siren of British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem that captured the palm trees, pagodas and temple bells of Burma during colonial rule. The romance of that verse, “Mandalay,” became a refrain for the exotic East, and of this city, in particular, once a royal capital […]

Myanmar is anticipating good prospects after the opening of China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a finance official said here Thursday. “Our expectation and view on the opening of the AIIB are good and clear, that was why we participated as a founding member. The AIIB is assumed as a dependable bank which supports regional […]

This summer, the U.S. Treasury Department received a petition from the financial industry asking for the removal of Asia World Port Management from the department’s sanctions list for Myanmar. The company operates Myanmar’s largest port. The U.S. deems its parent company, Asia World, as one of Myanmar’s past military government cronies, and banned U.S. companies […]

UK-based publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG) published its first country report on Myanmar which sheds light on the country’s new investment law, wide-ranging reforms and emerging economic sectors, the firm announced. With most Western sanctions now lifted and a new mining law in the pipeline, “The Report: Myanmar 2014” charts the […]